This application relates to an access door provided in an inner housing of a gas turbine engine to provide access to internal components, without the need to open the cowl or fan duct doors.
Gas turbine engines are known, and often include a fan delivering air to a compressor. Air is compressed in the compressor and delivered downstream to be mixed with fuel and combusted in a combustion section. Products of this combustion pass over turbine rotors, and drive the turbine rotors to rotate. A portion of the air delivered by the fan passes into a bypass duct about an engine core and is not delivered to the compressor. This air provides the majority of thrust for such a gas turbine engine.
A nacelle surrounds the fan, and defines the bypass duct with an inner housing. The inner housing surrounds the engine core. Typically fan cowl doors, and fan duct/thrust reverser doors (hereafter “fan duct doors”) are provided in the nacelle. These doors may be pivoted to an open position to provide access to the inner components in the inner housing. Typically, when these doors pivot, they carry a portion of the internal housing to provide access to the internal components. Thus, to provide access to internal components, the fan cowl doors, or the fan duct doors must be pivoted to an open position. This is somewhat cumbersome and time consuming, particularly when required for routine maintenance to an internal component such as the gear box or an electrical generator.
Locally positioned small access doors are incorporated into gas turbine engines to facilitate simple maintenance such as filling oil tanks or reading visual indications of an electrical generator oil level. However, these access doors have not been sufficiently large to allow maintenance such as removal or replacement of an auxiliary gear box or an electrical generator.